The business and culture of our digital lives, from the L.A. Times

SXSW lesson: How to fake authenticity

March 14, 2009 | 2:38
pm

Actor George Burnsis reputed to have said, "The secret of acting is sincerity. If you can fake that, you've got it made."

The quote came to mind this morning at a panel at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival, "What Your Start-up Can Learn From Barack Obama and Howard Dean." Moderator Clay Johnson of Sunlight Labs, a veteran of the Dean campaign from Blue State Digital, said companies that send out e-newsletters generally just annoy their customers. But the Obama campaign cleverly created the illusion of intimacy.

"You would get an e-mail from Barack Obama," Johnson said. "And it's not to everyone. It's to you."

When he tells people that he helped write those e-mails, people often looked stunned. "People would look at me and say, 'Barack didn't write those e-mails?' And they look really sad," he said.

Mary Katharine Ham -- a regular in the Weekly Standard and on Fox News and the only Republican on the panel -- seized on the revelation and put her own spin on it: "Obama lied, and lonely liberals with lots of cats cried."